American Literature Web Resources: Stephen Crane

• Born on November 1, 1871.
• Lived to be only 29 yrs. old, died June 5, 1900.
• Family: last of 14 children, son of Methodist minister who died when he was nine. He also moved three times when he was a child in the New York area.
• He never cared for schooling, attended Syracuse University for one semester where he was most noted for playing baseball.
• Crane lived the down-and-out life of a penniless artist who became well known as a poet, journalist, social critic, and a realist. He was noted as being an "original" in his field of work.
• Was obsessed by war and other forms of physical and psychic violence.
• Began writing for newspapers in 1891 when he settled in New York where he developed his powers as an observer of psychological and social reality.
• After he wrote Red Badge of Courage, he was hired as a reporter in the American West and Mexico.
• Red Badge of Courage earned Crane international acclaim at age 24.
• Crane moved to Jacksonville, Florida when he was 27 where he got married.
• While he was in Jacksonville, his boat The Commodore sank off the coast and he wrote about the harrowing adventure in The New York Press.
• Crane covered the Greco-Turkish War and later settled in England where he made friends with famous writers of the time including H.G. Wells and Henry James.
• He later covered the Spanish-American War for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.
• During the last few years of his life, he began writing furiously because he was in debt and suffering from tuberculosis. He later died while he was in Germany.